I'm Ranger Boone Merrick, and let me tell you how this forest came to be saved, because it comes down to one determined woman — and a famous name.
Back in the nineteen twenties, this hammock was in danger. It was one of the last great stands of virgin forest left in Florida, but Florida in the twenties was a frenzy of land speculation and logging, and a forest full of thousand-year-old timber was worth a fortune to a sawmill. These giant trees could have all come down. Some local folks who loved the hammock started trying to save it, but they didn't have the money to buy it and hold it. What they needed was an angel.
They found one in a woman named Margaret Shippen Roebling. And that name — Roebling — you may know it: the Roeblings were the family of engineers who built the Brooklyn Bridge, one of the wonders of America. Margaret had married into that family and its fortune, and she wintered down here in Florida, and when she learned this ancient forest was about to be lost, she opened her checkbook. She put in twenty-five thousand dollars — an enormous sum in those days — to buy the hammock outright, and more besides to help turn it into a park for everyone. She didn't do it for profit; there wasn't any. She did it because some things are worth more standing than cut. Because of Margaret Roebling, these trees are still here for you to drive beneath today. Every thousand-year-old oak you pass, tip your hat to her.
Photo: Brandon Moore (Raskuly) · CC BY 4.0
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